Garrison Keillor

Well, it's been a quiet week in Madison, Wisconsin, my hometown, out there on the edge of the Driftless area. It's been a wetter-than-average summer, it's been too wet for some of the crops, and the rivers are high. Too rainy most days for a picnic, but we know this much: when Garrison Keillor's "Love & Comedy" tour and the folks at Breese Stevens Field come together, a $500 curated picnic experience is possible. Two bottles of wine, Potter's crackers, Emmi Roth cheese, sausage, four bottles of water, two apples, two pears: a picnic for four, with a keepsake basket and corkscrew, and you'd be forgiven for thinking $500 ought to buy four people more than two pears, but ponder that from the $45 first-come-first-served uncovered bleacher seats. And that's the news from Madison, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the picnic baskets are curated. —Erica Motz